There are days when the awareness of death is just stark.  This week, the awareness of death and dying has been pervasive at our house.  On Sunday, my 73 year old father was feeling pain in his chest.  He told me that he had instructed my youngest brother to accompany him to his tree farm he wanted my brother to see the physical outlay and the extent of his holdings.  He had just celebrated his 73^rd birthday on August 6 and someone gifted him with a giant-print Bible.  He wanted to give it to me.  He told my kids what he perceived to be the secret of his success: time management.  We all tried to make light of it but my Dad was keenly aware of death and he was readying us for the eventuality.

On Monday afternoon, my daughter came home with grim news from school. A boy in her year but in a different section died of an aneurysm early that morning.  The parents were trying to wake the boy up to get ready for school but he wouldn’t wake up.  He was still alive when they rushed him to the hospital where he died.  He was just 13.  My children were affected because they are accustomed to older relatives dying during their childhood years, but this is the first time they have learned that death also comes to the young and the strong.

Yesterday, my husband went to the office as usual.  I told him that I wanted to go with him although I had paperwork to finish. I wanted to take time off to clear my mind and a road trip would de-tangle my mind muddle.  I prepared to leave with him and we were in the car.  But just as we were about to enter the NLEX, I had the distinct feeling that I should go back home.  I decided to get down from the car and take the jeep home.

The day was unremarkably ordinary for me: I sat in front of the computer pounding away at the keys. Unknown to me, forty kilometers away, my husband was feeling poorly.  He had to hear three troublesome ( contentious and problematic ) cases that added to his distress.  He didn’t tell me about it when I called him.  But I was surprised to hear him so serious on the phone.  He decided to leave the office early.

My kids texted me from school that they were on their way home.  I replied that they should also text their dad.  Their next text message to me was that they were going to wait for their father to pick them up.  My heart warmed at that.  My husband, all tired from bringing home the bacon was going out of his way to pick up his kids from school. And it was a good idea, too. They all got home late because they had to take a detour to avoid the traffic jam caused by road repair.  I had dinner ready on the table for them by the time they got home.  My husband seemed his usual self, chatty and eager to share with us how his day went.  But the fatigue on his face was noticeable to me.  I gathered the kids and we talked about their day around the dinner table as they did their homework so that my husband can have some rest and quiet in the bedroom.

When dinner was over, the dinner dishes were washed, and the kids were getting ready for bed, I checked on my husband and I was pleasantly surprised to see him fiddling around on his computer instead of resting in bed.  This was unusual.  He was not a night owl.  He went to bed early every night.  After I had locked all the doors and closed all the windows, checked the water faucets and the water drums to see that everything was tight and orderly, I went to bed myself.  Still, my husband was on his computer.  But, after a few minutes, he turned it off and went to bed too. In the dark, I asked him if he were all tired out but all wired up still.  He sighed and nodded.  I kissed him goodnight and, like the lights, I was out.  It was only 9:14 p.m.

I woke up with a start at 3:40 am and I couldn’t sleep anymore.  I shifted in bed and my husband reached out to me.  He told me that he couldn’t sleep early because he was observing his heart.  He felt no unusual symptoms except for a slight tightness around his left shoulder.  He was surprised to see that his blood pressure reading was 160/100.  He was in disbelief so he waited and checked it twice just to confirm.  The last reading was 158/90.

He said he felt that he was on the verge of a heart attack.  He didn’t pray to God to forestall a heart attack, instead, he prayed for me and for the kids.  He prayed that we would be comforted if he died right there and then.  He prayed that I wouldn’t feel so guilty if he died while I was away at work or at a hearing and the kids were in school. He prayed that I wouldn’t feel so guilty if he died in the house while I was there and I was unable to bring him to the ER on time.

He said he also took stock of his life and remembered to thank God for an answer to a prayer he had made last week.  On Monday, August 8. with the thought of his own death weighing on him, he asked God to provide a way so that he can leave us a comfortable financial buffer just before he died so that I wouldn’t have to worry about money while I was grieving.   On Friday, August 12,  he received a text message from the GSIS telling him that a sum (to us, it seemed a hefty sum) was available for him to borrow should he so desire.  He went and applied for that loan immediately, thanking God for the immediate answer. He never told me about that prayer of his last week. He never told me either that the GSIS loan was, to him, God’s response to his request for a financial buffer for me and the kids in the event of his death.

When he got news that the loan was approved, he told me instead that I should pray and ask God whether it was time we bought a brand new car and which kind. For as long as we have been married, we have never owned a brand-new car.  His brothers were mechanics and vintage car enthusiasts so second-hand cars were not an inconvenience.

He told me that just before I came in to check up on him before bedtime, after having taken his blood pressure reading and shocked that it was 158/90, he had asked God if it was his time to die.  When he turned on his computer to read Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Devotions, he was relieved.  There on the top of the screen was a verse quoted in bold italics:  “this sickness is not unto death. (John 11:4)”  He took it to mean that God was telling him that he won’t die that very night.

That was how he went to bed.  That was why he was wound up and couldn’t sleep immediately.  He was relieved and happy but he didn’t want me to lose sleep over all that so he decided to keep all that happened, his conversations with God, his requests to himself until the next morning.

As for me, I had been thinking about my husband’s death as well: he has a heart condition.  He is 58.  His dad died at age 61, his eldest brother died in October 2010 at age 60.  That he might go anytime was something I had learned to accept.  And I know that when he dies, I will deeply grieve his passing, but I also know that in time, I will learn to praise God and thank Him if and when He should decide to take my husband home to heaven.  My husband and I are both lawyers ( both of us from UP Law ).  We have been discussing details of funeral arrangements in case of his demise. His objective was to desensitize me and to prepare me.  What we couldn’t quite agree on just yet was whether or not it was wise for me to get a full time job now so that anytime he dies, the kids’ lives and mine wouldn’t be too disrupted by financial worries occasioned by his death.

I disagreed with him on that point: I wanted to be with him for as long as I can.  I want to be there, if possible, when he died and not to be away at work.  I had even prayed for God to give me a full time job sometime after I had grieved, and in the meantime, I asked him to bless my practice and allow me to save as much as I can to prepare us when it was my husband’s time to go.  My husband thought that having a full time job right now would provide me with a semblance of normalcy, a fall-back position when my personal life breaks apart for a while as I grieve.  That issue is still on the table. We hadn’t quite decided on that one.  We decided to pray instead and let God choose, let God move, let God decide.

Just this past week, I entertained three prospective clients. My legal practice is slowly picking up where I left off 13 years ago when I took a leave to give birth to my son.  I am busy, sometimes my head is a-whirl, my schedule is complicated, but I cannot complain.  I took this up-turn in my legal career as God’s way of preparing us for when my husband dies. It may seem morbid to talk about death and dying and anticipating death to you, reader, but I suppose that all this business-like preparation for an eventuality seems reasonable for lawyers who are accustomed to a well-ordered life.

Having said that, though, I also know that God often disrupts our well-ordered lives to make us painfully aware that we are dust; we are nothing but wild grass on an untended field.  He owns us not only by His right as Creator but also by His right as Redeemer: we were bought with the price of His blood, we are not our own. He holds all the right to dispose of us as He wills. Thus, can take my husband anytime.  This is God’s prerogative, his right as Creator and Redeemer.  I know, though, that God will not exercise his right cruelty but always in love.

Our God is Lord of the quick and the dead. At the same time, our God is a God of details.  He engineers each of the events of our lives for the purpose of molding our spiritual character so that we may be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.  For this reason, the child of God need never fear that his suffering will ever be senseless.  It may seem senseless while we are in the thick of the suffering, but our God’s sense of order is high above our sense of order.  His purposes and thoughts are good and holy and inscrutable to human reasoning.  This is what makes Him GOD.  He is unlike us; he is so far above us.  We cannot attain to him, He condescends to us.  This is why God was made flesh, after all.  It is for these reasons, these Biblical reasons that those who believe in Him can determinedly and steadfastly say:  We know that all things work together for good to them who love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.

It is for these reasons that we can boldly claim that NOTHING can separate us from the love of GOD which is in Christ Jesus our Lord: not death, not life, not height, not depth, not angels, not principalities nor any other creature can separate us from the love of God:  not even the thought of death, the valley of the shadow of death. The LORD giveth, and the LORD taketh away, blessed be the name of the LORD!